3-year-old

Yesterday was the blog's birthday - kinda forgot that with all this shopping&entertainment business summit in Singapore. :)

It has been 3 years. 

Thank you for still stopping by. Promise to post when Blitz goes closed beta - hopefully, there will be reading players around.

Overlord

[ALERT] Yet Another Feedback Topiс. IMPORTANT!

Asking for your opinion, guys, since I'm kinda in between regarding this blog right now. It has been a long 2+ years long road, and it's obviously time to change. Or quit... First is better, though :)

So,

Point ONE. What topics would you prefer to be covered in here in near future? Share your thoughts, I will make a list, and do my best to provide the requested materials. Just don't ask for impossible. :)

Point TWO. On a related note, what do you think of making this blog a platform for user-generated content as well (I will still be around)? Are there any potential contributors among you willing to participate? What topics you cover as an author? Or can you recommend others as authors? Give them link to the post then!! 

If the whole "platform" idea is welcomed, I'm going to share my contact details to talk things through. 

Discuss in comments. Your opinion counts!

[ALL] Make Yourself Heard!

I will be heading for GDC 2013 to San Francisco later this week and prior to the event I will be talking to our EU and NA offices regarding (in)formal community relations, blogs, information policy and relevant stuff. I would appreciate any feedback from your side regarding the mentioned stuff, namely: your attitude to this blog, official forums, customer relations of WG in general.
What are the most glorious win and epic fail?

[ALL] ChrisK Has Joined the Club!

I'm extremely excited to introduce one more speaker (finally native with English :)) who has just joined the blogging crowd and is going to use this resource as means of communication with you, guys. Chris Keeling aka ChrisK is Senior Producer at Wargaming.net, make him feel welcome here.

Overlord

I started freelancing in game writing and design on Panzer Elite for Wings Simulations in 1998, while I was still on active duty with the U.S. Army. After I transferred to the reserves, I continued to work freelance on games like America's Army: Operations, America's Army: Soldiers, Twilight War, and Order of War. I also squeezed in a year and a half combat deployment to Iraq, published my own World War II tabletop miniatures rules, and earned a Master of Fine Arts in Videogame Production and Design along the way. In 2009, I accepted an offer to teach full-time in the Game Design program at Full Sail University.

Things changed fairly quickly after that - I developed and taught several classes, and eventually became the Program Manager of the entire Game Design program (responsible for more than two dozen Course Directors and over 1,600 students!). I retired from the Army Reserve after 23 years of total service and continued to freelance part-time for Wargaming.Net. After the release of Order of War, the company kept growing, from about 60 developers in Minsk (plus one American consultant!) to over 1,300 developers in several studios with offices in about a dozen countries. We could only do this because of the amazing success of World of Tanks, and the potential we could see in World of Warplanes and World of Warships. 

After about four years of freelancing, I was offered a full-time position as Senior Producer here at Wargaming.Net. I have now embarked on the adventure of a lifetime working for a really amazing company loaded with vision, drive, and purpose. Among other things, I suggest Westernization practices and features that will enhance our appeal to players in North America and Western Europe (and, hopefully, everywhere else!), while working on secret new game ideas that may see the light of day in the future. On this blog I will help clarify some of the reasons behind our design decisions, predict some of our future endeavors, and occasionally explain some of the “historical elasticity” used to keep our games balanced between authenticity and fun.

When I’m not slaving away over my keyboard, reading player feedback in the forums, analyzing development plans, or playing other games (it’s research, honest!), you can find me playing as ChrisK on World of Tanks and in the World of Warplanes closed beta, or alpha testing a couple of games still under wraps, like World of Warships. 

See you on the battlefield!

ChrisK

[ALL] Speak Up!

Based on the poll results posted here there are some 60% of those who definitely now that the blog can be improved somehow. So, now it's turn to give your input on what can be done to increase the value of this resource in your eyes, what topics should be covered and, most importantly, how. :) Precious readers, speak up!

Any suggestions are welcome!

Change in Scope

It's has been a while since the latest big post back in December 2011.

Many things have changed since then, including my position and scope. Currently I'm involved as producer in two major projects that are currently in development by Wargaming.net - World of Tanks and World of Warplanes.

Thus at the current stage I'm devoting my time and effort to a more generalized and strategic level of things, having less time to some particular details (e.g. balance of tank X), which will inevitably affect the format of the blog and dramatically decrease time spent on forums.

From now on, I will do my best providing the information on how and why we do things instead of focusing on what exactly we do (such stuff can be found on specialized resources like forums and websites). This will minimize the overlap with similar sources.

The aforementioned change means that the blog will cover issues related to both ground and aerial warfare. I would like to keep most of the communications and discussions in one place, ie here. This will also include regular Q&A sessions and insider's posts of various kinds.

During the major break I also had chance to visit Game Developers Conference 2012 in San Francisco, US, which was really helpful and somewhat fun.

Even though some of the talks were dedicated to sort of obvious things with few or no innovative ideas and aimed at students, the majority could find something for their own taste. Looked like Naughty Dog and DICE had the biggest overall number of talks which were very popular.

 Lowly Overlord and mighty Sid Meier.

Prior to flying back home, I also had a chance to visit Tank Summit at one of the biggest private tank collections in the world comprising ~150 vehicles. Really impressive.

                                     T-54/55 "The beloved"

T-34 with 76mm. Really rare stuff, most of survived vehicles are 34-85.

M103 "The newcomer"

Just M3 Lee.

Starting with the next week, the blog will be regularly updated. Waiting for ideas and suggestions in comments.

PS: Hope, you also like the updated design of the blog.
PPS: Not planning to disable OpenID comments, asking everyone to be civilized. Thanks.

It's alive!

The blog is changing and evolving. Don't remove it from your bookmarks and speed dials.

Stay tuned.

Overlord

2.000.000

I mean blog views actually.

Some figures:

223 days, more than 2kk views with almost 10k views per day and the peak of 58.056 on August 10, and 245 followers so far.

Pageviews by country, Top 5:

United States  - 18%

Germany  - 15%

Poland  - 9.5%

United Kingdom  - 5.1%

Finland  - 3.9%

All time top post - Full Tech Trees Revised and Improved, 276.161 views, 359 comments.

Thanks for being active here, especially in comments.

A small gift.

The first one who names the vehicle will get 2.5k gold from me. Don't forget to put your nickname and server you are playing on.

August 8-13 Poll Results

4236 players took part in the most recent poll.  1925 of them (or 45%) did take part in public test 6.6, while 55% (or 2311) either did not want to do it or just were not aware of the test itself. Personally I think that EU and US players were quite active during public testing, and the figures prove it.

Had to finish the poll eariler this time due to my departure to Gamescom Expo (Cologne, Germany). Hope to see some of you there. : )

Thanks for the feedback.

New weekly poll is up. Please be active, this one is important.